“I know what you would say,” said the too sympathetic lady. “He will not allow that he is ill; it is what they all do. Ah me! to whom do you tell it? Have we not made the experience, my children and I? They are made like that; they will not be advised, they will not take care. Then the only thing, my child, is for you to take so much the more care. Let there be no emotion. That is the chief thing--no emotion. It would be well, perhaps, that you see his letters before they are given to him, and if any is of a character to cause excitement, keep it back. Ah, how much do I regret that I neglected some of these precautions! But, _mon enfant_, you must profit by our sorrow,” said the Comtesse, with tears in her eyes. These advices were addressed to her continually, altogether unaltered by the fact that Helen protested, whenever she had a moment given her in which she could do so, against the supposed illness they had attributed to her father. She protested that he was not ill; but it made no difference. The Comtesse paid no attention, but entered with enthusiasm into the minutiæ of care-taking, recollecting now one thing, now another, that Helen could do--_surtout point a’émotion!_ They were so sure they were right that she came at last to listen without any protestation. The _château_ gave Helen an altogether enlarged and widened life. She was there almost every day, leading them into the wintry woods, at which they shivered, but which Cécile boldly braved now and then, on the strong argument that in England, whether it was winter or summer, everybody went out; or sitting with them near the ugly stove which kept their rooms so warm, discoursing now and then in her turn about the English life which, to them, was so unknown. Helen, to tell the truth, did not know very much more about it than the two admiring girls who, on this point, believed all that she said. But she collected all her broken reminiscences, and all that she had heard from Miss Temple, and even, it must be added, some things which she had found in her novels, to instruct the eager mind of Cécile in her new duties. That she would have to walk out every day, whether it rained or snowed or blew a tempest; that she would have to be fully dressed by nine o’clock, in no _robe de chambre_, however pretty, or _négligé_ of loosely knotted hair, _point device_, and ready to receive visitors; that she would have to carry puddings to the cottagers, and take a class in the Sunday-school; and that the people would adore her. All this Cécile received with unbounded faith; though she was much disturbed by the Sunday-school, which had not been in her programme. “But they will know I am a Catholic,” she said.